A Chicago police officer accused of pocketing more than $18,000 in fraudulent pandemic relief loans has avoided suspension in a separate case after Superintendent Larry Snelling overruled oversight officials who found the officer cursed at and failed to de-escalate a chaotic arrest inside a police station. Officer Dana Hillard, the son of former Chicago Police Superintendent Terry Hillard, still faces potential dismissal over the loan fraud allegations even as the discipline in the station incident was wiped away.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability had found that Hillard broke department rules by failing to de-escalate the October 30, 2023 incident at the Wentworth District police station, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. COPA had recommended up to a 29-day suspension for Hillard's use of profanity and failure to de-escalate the situation, which began after a father and son caused an uproar over being told they had missed their turn to file a crash report.
Body camera footage cited in the case showed another officer physically intervening to keep Hillard from approaching the men, and Hillard was recorded telling one of them, “You came here for our f---ing help. You should've called your motherf---ing brother.” The arrested man was taken into custody during a struggle after he smacked Hillard on the shoulder, and Hillard brought one of the men outside during the confrontation. COPA had also found that Hillard engaged in an unjustified argument with the arrested person, though the agency did not sustain separate allegations that he wrongfully arrested the man or grabbed his neck without justification.
Snelling Rejects Oversight Findings — Again
In a letter to COPA Chief Administrator Lakenya White, Snelling rejected the agency's findings, writing that Hillard's actions were a reasonable response to an escalating and volatile situation. Snelling further argued that the use of profanity did not make the verbal altercation unjustified given the context of managing two aggressive and noncompliant individuals, according to the same account. Hillard admitted to using profanity and failing to de-escalate the situation but avoided the suspension COPA had sought.
COPA had amended its findings on July 15, and the agency's original recommendation also included that Hillard undergo de-escalation training. Attorney Steffany Hreno said COPA's original recommendations were altered in the interests of settlement, though the case ultimately ended with the sustained allegations against Hillard wiped out entirely. Hillard did not respond to a request for comment on the outcome.
The reversal fits a documented pattern for Snelling, who has repeatedly overruled COPA in other high-profile cases involving improper weapon discharges and botched raids, opting for lighter penalties instead of the terminations or severe discipline the civilian oversight body recommended. Just last week, Hoodline reported that a Chicago cop who botched a teen raid kept his job and was promoted to lieutenant despite COPA's recommendation for termination.
The PPP Fraud Case Still Looms
Separate from the station incident, Hillard is accused of obtaining more than $18,000 in fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loans, according to records cited by the Sun-Times, and of making false statements about pandemic-relief loan applications. The city's Office of Inspector General reported the allegations against Hillard in a July 2025 report and recommended he be fired for allegedly obtaining fraudulent PPP funds and filing bogus applications for other pandemic-relief loans. Investigators also found that Hillard attempted to obstruct the Inspector General's investigation.
The Chicago Police Department preliminarily agreed with the Inspector General's recommendations and directed the Law Department to prepare formal charges seeking Hillard's dismissal, but those formal dismissal charges have not been made public more than a year after the recommendations were issued. The Inspector General's office also urged the department to add Hillard to the city's do-not-hire list, a sanction that permanently bars individuals from municipal re-employment and has separately sparked federal defamation lawsuits from other former high-ranking CPD personnel, as Hoodline previously reported in its piece on the ex-deputy chief's do-not-hire lawsuit.
Hillard, who earns $119,154 annually, joined the Chicago Police Department in 2006 and previously worked as a campus police officer at Northwestern University. He remains stripped of policing powers in the separate disciplinary case and currently works in the department's Alternate Response Section, which handles non-emergency calls and is routinely staffed by officers on light-duty, desk-duty, or convalescent status.
A Watchdog's Zero-Tolerance Stance
Hillard's stalled case comes as Chicago City Inspector General Deborah Witzburg has maintained a strict stance on pandemic loan fraud among municipal workers, asserting in a January quarterly report that city departments had agreed to fire every employee with sustained PPP fraud allegations because individuals cannot maintain public employment while defrauding the government. As of July, the Inspector General's office had identified at least 28 Chicago police officers accused of PPP loan fraud, with police brass preliminarily agreeing to fire eight officers who improperly obtained a combined $282,639 in pandemic relief loans, according to WTTW.
In the first quarter of this year alone, the Inspector General's office reviewed 314 closed disciplinary investigations from COPA and CPD's Bureau of Internal Affairs while sustaining 10 PPP loan fraud probes across city agencies. The fraud allegations also carry potential federal criminal exposure separate from administrative firing proceedings — Hoodline reported in May that a CPD sergeant was federally charged with fraudulently securing more than $41,000 tied to a nonexistent retail bakery.
Hillard's father, Terry Hillard, was appointed Chicago Police Superintendent by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 1998 and served until retiring in 2003, capping a decorated 35-year career that included the Chicago Police Medal of Honor for being wounded in the line of duty. He went on to co-found Hillard Heintze, a security risk management firm that has worked with corporations, government agencies and prominent individuals.
Under Chicago's municipal disciplinary process, when a superintendent disagrees with a COPA recommendation, a randomly assigned Chicago Police Board member ultimately determines whether the superintendent met the legal burden to overcome that recommendation. Whether that same process will eventually resolve the long-pending termination charges tied to Hillard's alleged loan fraud remains an open question, with formal charges still unfiled more than a year after investigators first recommended his firing.
